Question

I’m tryind to build a helper to select the next available day from a list.

I have a list of days as a reference (those are the day where I want something to happen)

class_list = ["Monday","Saturday","Sunday"]

I need to check the current day and match it in the list.
If it’s part of the list I select it, if it isn’t I select the next one from the list.

this is what i have so far:

#select current day, get its name value and weekday number value
today = Time.now
today_name = today.strftime("%A")
#not sure which of the 2 following line is better
#today_index = DateTime.parse(today_name).wday 
today_index = today.strftime("%u").to_i

Then I do the matching

if class_list.include? today_name
  #victory!!!
  puts today_name
else
  puts "find next day"
  class_list.each do |x|
    if DateTime.parse(x).wday > today_index
      puts "result #{x}"
      break
    end
  end
end 

When I run it seems to work fine, but as i’m just learning Ruby i’m always wondering if i’m not overcomplicating things.

Does this code looks alright to you Ruby masters?

Answer 1

require 'date'

def next_date_from(ar)
  cur_day = Date.today
  cur_day += 1 until ar.include?(cur_day.strftime('%A'))
  cur_day
end

puts next_date_from(%w(Monday Saturday Sunday))
#=>2011-10-01